Producing advertising and promotional items for mass distribution, whether by mail or newspaper, for example, requires a high speed and low cost printing and forming capability. High speed printing and inline forming of these items, such as advertising mailers and coupon packages, has been the most cost effective manner of making these items.
A large publication printing press also used for printing magazines is generally used because of its speed and wide web printing capability. These presses normally print a web of about 30 inches in width at speeds of up to 3000 feet per minute. The printing press prints on the web a series of identical printed sections called a repeat. These sections are the width of the web, and the longitudinal length equals the circumference of the printing cylinder. One typical printing cylinder circumference is 22 inches. Previously, when the publication press is used for direct mail items, where the web is subsequently processed inline, two or more identical mailer prints with both envelope and insert material, must be printed end to end within one repeat.
A printed web is subsequently formed when it passes through a number of inline processing stations, including, adhesive application, personalized laser or inkjet imaging, perforating, folding, or ribboning, assembling, and cutting to produce the finished product. The finished product, if it is an advertising mailer, is produced at the web speed by this inline processing operation to produce a ready to mail, and postal zip number sorted mailer.
The forming of the envelope to enclose the advertising contents is accomplished by a longitudinal folding of the envelope portion of the web along the longitudinal axis of the envelope and over the advertising content section. The previously applied adhesive then holds the folded over envelope sections together as a completed envelope. The longitudinal folding operation described requires that two or more advertising mailers be printed end to end in one repeat.
Frequently, to supplement the amount of advertising material that is to be enclosed in a given mailer, additional printed advertising material must be added inline before folding of the envelope. However this requires a second printed web and registration of the two webs, before the envelope folding stage. This procedure is costly, since difficulties are encountered with respect to maintaining registration between the two webs. If a break in the web occurs, this further complicates the registration and correlation of the webs, particularly if there is personalization data specific to each envelope and its insert mailer piece, that must be matched. These extra problems are not inconsequential, and may amount to as much as 30 to 50 percent in additional cost for a given product.
Similarly, separate independent production of the envelope and the printed insert material, and, subsequent mechanical stuffing of the envelope is a costly alternative. This method is a more costly process than inline production. Although, the inline method is more efficient and less costly, there is need for improving the inline process to enable a single inline web to provide more insertable material and more varieties of format.
With conventional inline printing and converting, the printed material for an item is confined to no more than one half repeat of the web. Confining the printed material for an item on the web to no more than one half of repeat restricts the ability to make, from one web, a larger envelope product, add more printed insert material, or to vary the format of the printed content, of the inline package. Only half of the web repeat area is available for an item because a web can only be folded along the long axis of the envelope requiring two folds to enclose printed contents and form the envelope.
Accordingly, there is a need to overcome this limitation of an inline printing method, and to use a full repeat area, thereby providing a more versatile and substantially larger inline package.